Discussion on Electric Transportation Is Part of a Larger Topic
When asked what 2GreenEnergy is, I normally talk about what we’re doing to forward the cause of clean energy, but I quickly add that we’re about sustainability more generally. I want to ensure that we play a role in any aspect of cleantech applied to transportation, agriculture, or any other discipline that affects humankind’s long-term viability.
Here’s a good example — our ongoing conversation on electric transportation, in which frequent commenter Glenn Doty wrote:
Since the externalities of fossil fuels are not priced into the market equation, there is literally zero chance that EV’s will make a dent in the market. … Costs matter …. Upgrading the American transportation system to EV’s, then upgrading the electricity grid to distribute sufficient energy from the wind-rich plains to the entire U.S., then upgrading storage across America to resolve the intermittency issues with wind and solar, then installing rapid-charging infrastructure across America, then upgrading the last-mile energy capacity of the grid to accommodate widespread at-home charging…
All told the price tag for the above will be in excess of 15 trillion dollars. That’s not a typo, and it’s not an exaggeration. This is essentially a dead cost to the consumer so they can drive one type of car rather than driving another type of car…
Glenn has a terrific grasp on math, but I believe that the idea that the consumer needs to absorb his share of $15 trillion so that he can “drive one type of car versus another” misses a few points.
First, let’s talk about that $15 trillion:
• This is money that will be spent over a considerable period of time.
• The infrastructure by which we deliver electricity to our populace is rapidly falling apart and needs to be upgraded anyway.
• This upgrade is especially necessary if we expect to make any real progress in ratcheting up our use of renewable energy to drive down our use of fossil fuels. Let’s review the imperative here. The vast majority of climate scientists tell us that our dependence on coal, oil, and natural gas is causing climate change, ocean acidification, ever-increasing rates of lung disease, loss of biodiversity, and dozens of other disasters to our personal health, and to that of our natural environment. The cost of these, if they can be measured at all, is stratospheric. Most scientists tell us that our civilization will collapse if we don’t take aggressive action in this arena on a planetary level. But renewable resources tend to exist in specific geographical regions, making energy transmission an important objective.
• The efficiencies brought about by upgrading our grid are enormous. For example, the concept that we call “smart-grid” removes huge chunks of cost, mostly by reducing energy consumption. Granted, these cost reductions are measured in tens of billions, not trillions of dollars.
• Smart-grid also changes the condition that a large percentage of the cost of delivering electricity to consumers and businesses is built around approximately 100 hours a year, when demand is at its peak.
• The advent of electric transportation, since it’s normally recharged at night when demand for power is low and wind energy capacity is high, has the potential to help us integrate more renewables onto the grid.
• Not that professional economists have the same standing in our scientific world that they enjoyed a few years ago, but most of them have extremely convincing arguments to the effect that putting the required millions of people to work on these endeavors will rejuvenate the economy and expand the tax base. They have some fairly precise numbers that they project here, and I find them compelling. Those who read my second book (Is Renewable Really Doable?) will recall my interview with Dr. Robert Pollin, Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute, on the subject.
• Such an effort would also help to rebuild the battered middle class, and re-establish the U.S. as the super-power it was in the 20th Century. It’s clear that energy is emerging as the single most important industry in the 21st Century, and Americans are at a loss to explain why the country they love is sitting on the sidelines while dozens of countries in South America, Europe and Asia, most notably China, are leading the world. Obvious, it’s impossible to assign a dollar value to this benefit, but no one doubts that it is of immense importance at a national level.
• A better grid with stronger resiliency will reduce the frequency and duration of power outages that, due to extreme weather events, are increasingly common, often with lethal effects.
• This planet may not be running out of oil, but it’s certainly running out of cheap oil. The costs, both financially and ecologically, of extracting and refining oil from tar sands and shale, are far greater than most people believe.
• Since its onset a century ago, oil dependence has caused global hostilities. It’s hard to know how to put a price on a young man, who, serving in the Middle East, comes back in a bag. Here’s an excerpt from my 2010 interview with James Woolsey, ex-U.S. CIA Director:
Oil, like gold before it, has the effect that Paul Collier at Oxford, and Tom Friedman cite sometimes called the “oil curse.” Generally it’s just that an autocratic state, when it depends for a huge share of its income on a commodity that has a lot of economic rent attached to it, that rent accrues to the central power of the state essentially. So you tend not to have representative institutions like legislatures and you tend to have a much more difficult time getting out of an autocratic structure than with a broad-based economy.
If you look at evolution, the examples I usually use are Taiwan and South Korea. They were tough dictatorships, but as they prospered and built up a middle class — and this happened to them a lot faster than it happened in Europe in the medieval and early modern times — it was a similar phenomenon. The middle class builds up, it’s diversified, it starts wanting economic liberties and that transmogrifies after a while into political liberties and it tends to gravitate toward freer institutions. That tends not to happen when you’ve got a lot of economic rent associated with a commodity that you’re heavily dependent on. Read Larry Diamond’s book if you haven’t already. If you look at the 22 countries that count on two-thirds or more of their national income from oil — it’s fair to say all 22 of those countries are autocratic kingdoms or dictatorships.
And I haven’t compared that list with Freedom House’s list of the 40 basically – those that Freedom House calls “Not Free.” There are about 120 democracies in the world, not perfect, but nonetheless regular elections and another 20 countries like Bahrain that are reasonably well and decently governed, even though not democratically so. And then you’ve got 40 really bad guys. And I’m pretty sure that list of 22 in Larry Diamond’s book is virtually all from the list of 40 bad guys — or “Not Free,” in Freedom House’s terms.
Finally, as Glenn correctly points out, “Costs matter.” He’s also right that the externalities of fossil fuels are not priced into the market equation. But how much longer can this possibly be the case? How feasible is it
that humankind will fail to restrain itself, and then go forward and poison itself into extinction? As strong as the oil companies are, and as powerfully as their tentacles constrict our political discourse and frustrate our attempts to cut ourselves free from them, it’s only a matter of time until the world wakes up to the truth.
I excerpted this from a post I wrote earlier: In his farewell address in 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned us:
“You and I, and our government must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow.”
I was only six years old at the time, quite unaware of the insight that Ike had bestowed upon us. Of course, he wasn’t the first. 150 years earlier, Thomas Jefferson wrote:
“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes.”
In short, we have a huge problem that we need to confront. For us to continue to party like rock stars on cheap energy (whose true cost is many times higher than what we’re paying for it) is simply wrong. Let’s pony up the resources to address this situation now, right now, given that, if we ignore this opportunity, the costs will only increase over time.
Glenn correctly points out the huge cost of going to electric transportation but he implies that it is something we have to pay all at once. Fortunately we have hybrid electric vehicles that bridge the gap to the future. The hybrids can and I believe will wean us off fossil fuels as our fleet adopts them and eventually adopts the all electric modes of transportation. The grid needs to be built out anyway as Craig pointed out. It just doesn’t have to be done all at once. I think that the squeeky wheel will get the grease first. The distribution in an area will be upgraded when some brown-outs are predicted or actually occur. That is the most efficient way to make such a massive conversion.
Wasting green power to pull CO2 out of the air when it could be used to charge vehicles is misdirected. Energy input into a battery is more efficiently stored and used than energy put into a GTL process.
Larry,
I’m a huge fan of hybrids. I think they are a great technology and I look forward to the day that a super-majority of vehicles produced are hybrids.
But that’s not the same thing as trying to run a transportation system off of the electric grid. It’s not the same thing at all.
Hybrids are not the grid but they are essential for creating the demand to build out the grid. The public service commissions around the country are not interested in approving transmission lines or new generation until they see the demand. Hybrids create the demand and do it at a reasonable pace for the build-out to take place.
If hybrids out-pace the build-out of the grid, the government can adjust the subsidies for their purchase downward. This is an opportunity to build infrastructure at the rate it can be utilized with minimal new impact on electric rates or tax burden. The drivers of electric/hybrid vehicles will pay for generation through their increased use.
Larry,
Hybrids don’t impact the grid at all. That doesn’t create demand for grid improvements… it’s not any more related to grid improvements than putting up statues. There’s no correlation.
Hybrids are great because they clearly reduce overall consumption of fossil fuels. It takes only about one-two years to pay-back the increased emissions in construction and assembly of the hybrid vehicle, then you’ve got years of driving on demonstrably less net emissions than would have been the case had you simply bought a straight ICE. That’s a good technology – it results in a net decrease in emissions.
hybrids can and do impact the grid, especially if you add wind or solar into the mix.
It’s a matter of technology saturation, if I have enough EV’s (hybrid and phev’s) on the road then I have a very large distributed energy storage system that can be used as peak shaving for consumption. This is currently done by having additional gas turbine capacity that just spins at no load until it is needed.
Battery back-up power can be used for buffering of high useage events (like a/c loads in a heat wave), or switching events as more capacity is brought online to handle increases in demand….no more rolling black-outs!
I recently converted a 2008 prius to run on Gasoline, ethanol E-85, or natural gas. It is an extended range Plug in hybrid with 2Kwh’s of additional battery. With an EV-only switch he can go about 20 miles on a charge as a pure electric (for pennies a mile)before the engine kicks on. Then he can drive about 150 miles on CNG (at less than half the cost of gasoline), and if he needs to take a really long trip he still has the prius original fuel tank.
With the addition of a 240 watt solar panel he can charge his battery in about 8 hours and have 20 miles of atonomy even if he has no access to CNG, ethanol or gasoline. With an inverter he is able to run power tools and appliances by plugging them into the car…..
Granted putting $13k into a used prius isn’t for everyone, but……
Been to Jersey Lately?
There are issues,but math isn’t one of them! Electric motors are so much more efficient than gasoline engines that the energy savings alone will almost pay for the infrastructure development.
Hybrids, and fuel cells are transitional technologies to pure electrics.
Craig,
The discussion you excerpted for this post involved a question of whether it was more wise to distribute electricity across America for use in an EV paradigm or whether it would be better to use that energy near the point of generation to synthesize cheap carbon-neutral gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, etc…
My cost estimate only assumed the amount of additional costs that would be incurred exclusively for the EV paradigm. If WindFuels were chosen instead, some additional grid upgrades would obviously continue.
But the build-out of wind power is waiting on either an expansion of the grid (part of that 15 trillion dollar expense) or a viable integration technology (WindFuels). Wind cannot continue to be built without limits until one of those two options are fulfilled. In one case (EV), it’s a dead cost to consumers, while the other case represents a net DECREASE in waste and cost for the electrical industry, while the costs of the WindFuels facilities are recovered by selling synthesized fuel for the same price or less than current market prices.
But we were talking about replacing unsustainable fossil oil with perfectly sustainable (infinite) synthesized oil. The EV’s, and their associated dead costs, are not needed.
Craig,
To be fair here, I must point out that for a small percentage of EV’s, the above is not needed. Having one or two EV’s per hundred houses can almost certainly be absorbed by the local capacity, especially considering the improved efficiency of the average house on the block. But having 5%? By then every transformer leading into the neighborhood will have to be upgraded… etc…
There is a difference between discussing the first million or so EV’s and discussing a full switch. As a niche for extremely wealthy people that don’t mind spending a lot for a car that requires a second car… well… it’s considerably less of a problem than the SUV craze.
🙂
Hybrids don’t impact the grid at all. That doesn’t create demand for grid improvements… it’s not any more related to grid improvements than putting up statues. There’s no correlation.
What????
That is like saying that invention of electric appliances like refrigerators and electric stoves did not impact the grid.
The grid is the complete system of generation and transmission coupled with load balancing equipment. Anything that creates increased demand creates the need to expand the grid. As hybrid electrics are adopted, the demand for electricity increases and the increased demand forces a build out of the grid in the locations where the demand is increasing. The alternative is brown-outs or black-outs. Hybrids and other electric vehicles can serve as a load balancing tool for the grid during an emmergency. Power can be fed back into the grid. A lot of smart grid development will have to take place before that can be a reality though.
Larry,
Apparently you use the term “hybrid” to refer to plug-in-hybrid-electric-vehicles, which I typically classify as “PHEV”.
That is where the discussion has broken down.
I do not favor PHEV’s, I consider them to be a complete waste. The Prius (not the plug-in version) is still, in my opinion, the greatest vehicle on the road.
hybrids and PHEVs
Yes, we were not communicating very well due to my imprecise term “hybrid”. Yes, I meant plug in hybrid electric vehicles.
We still are polar opposites though. I consider a plain Jane HEV to be a waste of time and energy that does not get us far enough down the road to a sustainable green energy economy. The PHEV does allow the owner to use elecricity instead of gasoline for all but the long trips that exceed the battery capacity. The arguement about the plug-in using electricity from coal is weak. It is the direction we are headed that is more important. We are moving away from coal and toward wind and PV generation. The PHEV is there to pick up the slack and perhaps even be used for load balancing. What is not to like with a PHEV. I want one now!
An interesting thread – partly because I’m trying to infer some of the conversations mentioned herein. Windfuels – an intuitive sounding name. Sounds like yet another transducer concept. Change one form of energy into another. Of course, anytime you do this there is loss. The loss has to be both technically acceptable and economic. PV used to power electrolysis for making hydrogen is a failing example. All side effects considered, it is much more efficient (less costly) to use the power directly rather than create hydrogen to be used at a later time. How you use that power is the trick.
Another inference here is the old debate between utility scale generation and transmission vs. distributed generation and consumption. In a perfect world of available statistics, this would be computable and not subject to debate. Unfortunately, we don’t have that level of detail in our various databases and so we need to estimate. In my situation (the southwest – plenty of sun, minimal wind), a just shy of $30K investment in PV will be crossing over into positive territory in about a year – a total of 9 years of ownership. Hugely expensive compared to what I can buy PV for now. I just bought 5kW worth of expansion for just south of $7K. In many cases, offsetting grid power with local power is a win-win.
Couple of things on EV charging. As an EV owner for about 4 years now, my statistics are well established. I drive about 10K local miles per year on electricity and about 4K long distance miles per year on gasoline in a hybrid that gets around 45mpg mostly due to my lead foot. I charge at home since my electricity is “free”. I’ve used public chargers, but more so for the experience than the need. I charge at night for a variety of reasons I won’t go into here, that obviously has nothing to do with the price of power. Clearly, every grid operator has a different situation, but in my discussions with SCE they are pretty confident that single family dwelling home charging in the evening won’t require significant upgrades. They see the nominal transformer upgrade cycle as covering most of their situations. Again, ymmv depending on where you live.
Urban high rise living is a more complex equation, but here’s the interesting part – those high rise condos are in the same locales as major office buildings. The high voltage distribution has been designed to accommodate those massive daytime energy eaters. While last mile infrastructure to the garages of the condos might require alteration, it is not as significant an investment. Yes, it requires some aspects of smart grid technology and some design principles changed, but it is doable for quite a bit less investment than naysayers would have us believe.
The other thing about urban living is that our societies seem to be evolving towards shared transportation resources. Many city dwellers I know enjoy the fact that they don’t have to deal with a car as primary transportation. Zip car, shared bicycles, electric bicycles and traditional mass transit are eroding the urban dweller’s need for personal automobiles.
As I’ve said before, I was a peak oil person until I realized that wasn’t the issue. Greenhouse gases are the issue. Also, I don’t believe for a second that green energy would significantly change the overall employment outlook. The whole point of cheap energy is that its cheap. Significant employment means not cheap. Its not about the economy, its about the gases. We need to reduce about 80% of our green house gases. That’s non-trivial without leap frogging fossil fuels completely. Natural gas is a tough one because we need to reduce pipeline and well head losses from the little over 3% we are now sustaining down to below 1%, else natural gas is a net loss over gasoline in terms of greenhouse effect. None of this is easy.
Arlene,
Thanks for the interest. Just to catch you up, WindFuels is a three-step process of converting excess intermittent electricity into liquid fuels. The total process efficiency is projected to be between 55-58% for most scales of interest, with total costs projected to be between $0.80 – $2.00/gallon depending on the cost of electricity and the value of the liquid oxygen bi-product. The fuels would then be carbon neutral gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, etc..
http://windfuels.com/
Solar doesn’t have the same integration issues as wind, but solar energy still costs more than 4 times as much as wind energy… so wind is still winning the race by a large margin. Solving the integration problem for wind would allow a faster switch to renewable energy than anything else that could be done, without exception. Good wind regions are isolated, so growth in wind power doesn’t do anything at all for the prospect of cleaner EV driving. WindFuels is a much faster path towards clean transportation.
Disclosure – I’m on the team developing WindFuels.
There are lots of things which can be done to trim the above costs by reducing the storage and grid capacity required using load shifting and energy efficiency.
If you have widespread smart charging points for electric vehicles it should be possible to adapt charging strategies to match the available power rather than the other way around.
For example, if on a particular night you don’t intend to drive your car between 9 in the evening and 7-30 the next morning, it makes no difference to you when the car gets charged so long as it is ready with enough charge for the day’s use in the morning.
A charge optimising system may decide that it is better to wait until 2 in the morning to charge the battery rather than charging it immediately – because demand is expected to be low at that time, and winds are expected to pick up during this particular night creating a power surplus.
Other demand side interventions are also possible to achieve peak shaving such as short interruptions to the operation of large commercial air conditioning systems, as well as alterations to the operation of smart fridges and freezers.
There is enough inertia in buildings with large air conditioning systems that a 15 minute interruption should not be a problem.
Likewise if everybody had smart fridges, if for an hour or two when demand is high every fridge thermostat in the state is set a little higher – say 5 centigrade rather than the usual 3 centigrade this may shave hundreds of megawatts off demand in peak hours.
– Both 3 and 5 centigrade are within the safe range.
A university friend of mine estimated the “spinning reserve” potentially achievable in the UK using refrigeration equipment at around 2 gigawatts.
Also as an example of energy efficiency it looks likely that much of the current lighting infrastructure will be replaced with LED lights and other high efficiency technologies potentially reducing total grid power demand by 10 to 20%.
Gary,
In the case where you are describing, it’s actually the smart charging system that is doing any good at all for the environment, while the car itself is just a draw on the electric grid.
Would it not then make more sense to give subsidies to encourage the optional charging system – which does good – and give no subsidies to encourage the EV – which does no good?
🙂
Something to think about.
😉
But in the end I just don’t think EV’s will be a big enough player to make any real dent one way or another. Once the subsidies run out then the vehicles will simply not sell – even if they continue to allow single drivers to drive in the HOV lanes (doing more net environmental damage than SUV’s) and continue to allow the EV’s to not pay road taxes (though they cause far more road wear).
I like what you say against the fossil fuel industries but can’t help wonder why nuclear energy is also on your bad list. The idea that renewables could one day solve our energy problems is an admirable goal. The math needed to actually make the transition requires a look at the cost of replacing coal. Not the cost in dollars but the cost as in consequences of trying to upgrade the grid or build enough renewable plants to replace the reliable coal that produces about half of the energy we use for electricity. Nuclear energy gets far too much flack when in truth the safety record is amazing. Even Fukushima everyone’s favorite new example of for the top reasons to abandon nuclear energy is getting some countries like England to wake up to the reality that nuclear energy cannot be ignored. The radiation is no worse than what many location on our planet get naturally.
What is cause of the “not in my back yard” attitude that so many environmentalists have? Largely a fear of the unknown. The consequences of nuclear accidents about one every 15 years seems really blown out of proportion when you consider the enormous damage cause by burning coal.
The problem with trying to improve a country’s economy is that it cannot happen if the electricity is not reliable. Factories cannot survive on renewables if that is the only source of power. Grids are not ready. Smart grids are a good idea to strive for but the more likely scenario if we ignore nuclear energy is that we will all reach the point of no return waiting for renewables to succeed. Climate change, global warming, AGW, call it what you will is the motivating factor to allow the best bridge technology to grow. That technology is nuclear energy in my opinion.
You’re certainly not alone, though (obviously) the issues are operational safety, waste disposal, and cost.
Statistically safety for nuclear power in the US does better than renewables, mind you it is only marginally. You may have noticed my blog before. The reason for the name “Deregulate the Atom” is to raise awareness about how a great technology has been prevented from maturing because of the over regulating authority of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the fossil industries campaign against their best competitor. I see the 3rd and 4th generation reactors as a huge improvement over the designs that were built 40 years ago and are still running. China will lead the way with the most number of new reactor designs.
My other pronuclear blog is http://thoriummsr.com which is supportive of molten salt reactor technology which is the safest design for a nuclear reactor possible.
Thanks for your posts against fossil fuels. They are well thought out and provide me with some ideas too.
Best of luck.
Rick Maltese
Good points here. Please see: http://2greenenergy.com/nuclear-versus-solar-energy/32785/.
Quickly weighing in on nuclear power. I’m actually strongly for nuclear energy… but you have to understand that our government system will never enable it to be competitive. This isn’t ranting about one faction or another.
Locals have more control over the decisions on nuclear energy. And they have legitimate fears over water consumption, end-of-life plant retirement, property values, and extreme low-probability failure events (as well as less valid concerns)… Because of this so many studies are forced into zoning cases, and so many minor tweaks are forced into the design… that each plant is built as a one-off design.
This then becomes absurdly expensive, and non-competitive.
I don’t know how to make it not so. As long as locals have zoning authority, this issue will persist. It’s only in centralized government structures where single-design multiple-production enables cost savings and a competitive industry.
Comparing nuclear and renewables is not the same as comparing apples with apples.
True, the accident figures for nuclear are very low at nuclear plants, but the worst case scenario is horrendous.
Aside from the (admittedly rare) major accidents like Chernobyl, 3 mile island, or Fukushima, there is the possibility of a rogue state or terrorist organisation diverting fissile materials to a nuclear weapons program.
I don’t know of any insurance company prepared to fully cover all risks for a nuclear power plant.
The fear than Saddam Hussein may have been secretly developing weapons of mass destruction was the stated reason for the second Gulf way which killed hundreds of thousands of people.
For Wind and Solar, the accident figures are higher but mostly involve construction or maintenance accidents involving one or two people at a time. Such accidents whilst sad for the individuals and their families cannot compare in society wide disruption to a worst case nuclear accident. Worst case for renewables, a hand full of dead, modest property damage and an insurance claim of manageable scale.
“Worst case for renewables, a hand full of dead, modest property damage and an insurance claim of manageable scale.”
Not true. You are looking at one tower and comparing it to one nuclear power plant.
The only fair comparison is on deaths or accidents per KWH. The average nuclear plant puts out orders of magnitude more power than a whole field of wind turbines.
The potential nuclear accident is by far greater than one guy falling off of a wind tower but multiplied by thousands per year stacked up against zero per year at nuclear plants for year after year… eventually it adds up to a nuclear story that I would be proud to share with the public. It does not get national attention even though there is a steady, continuing trickle of deaths throughout the green industry and they are only locally reported. Everyone hears about the nuclear accidents and rightly so, but, fair minded people have to put it into perspective. The news organizations don’t seem to feel that is their responsibility.
I think the public’s perception of of the “value” of electric vehicles will change when news cameras report on how an EV is providing emergency power to a residence in the aftermath of the next superstorm.
Bill,
It doesn’t really work like that. There may be some plausible cases where an EV can power a house for a few hours, but after that the vehicle battery would be depleted, and the house would still be without power. Then the news would note that some EV owners have no ability to travel because the power has been out for days and they can’t just fill up their car with liquid fuels and drive around… they’re literally just stuck until several hours after the power comes back on…
I don’t think such an occurrence would engender goodwill for EV’s.
It doesn’t really work like that. There may be some plausible cases where an EV can power a house for a few hours, but after that the vehicle battery would be depleted
…
But if the EV is HPEV, what is not to like about one of those in a power outage situation. You have an instant generator on wheels. You can drive your PHEV car to your friend’s house who has lost power and plug them in to your mobile grid rescue machine. On the way to their house you can pick up a few cans of fuel to fill the tank if it is a prolonged outage. I would buy a PHEV before I would waste money on a backup generator. A PHEV is truly a dual purpose machine.
I fully agree with Glenn Doty that E2L (Electricity To Liquids) into alcohol/ether rank among the best option: For storing electricity, for transportation, for MTO, MTP, MTG, MOGD … and whatever synthetic hydrocarbons and plastics. Unrivalled flexibility. The infrastructure as well as the vehicles are already athand with minor modifications. Including the ultimate solution of using the carbon atoms from the sky (instead of from the underground). Thus an climate neutral anthropogenic carbon cycle, mimicking photosynthesis.
I havn’t found out myself – it’s the George Olah concept, worthy of a second Nobel prize.
We’re car comfort obsessed! My hybrid electric trike gives me 95% of my mobility requirements and I could easily make that 100% and survive in comfort.
In Canada I require a warm coat for the winter but is that a real problem?
Predicting the future is always risky, but it may well be that electric vehicles will become an important part of our transportation mix, especially when abundant clean energy becomes available to charge them. The alternative would be using artificial fuels with no net CO2 emissions. And, of course, improved city planning and improved public transportation would help.
In addition to electric vehicles, we should be thinking about diet since a large percentage of energy usage is used for food production. Providing for a high meat diet requires far more water and energy than providing for a vegetarian diet. Even now, as its prosperity increases, the demand in China for meat is rapidly increasing. Decades ago, for other reasons, I stopped eating meat and never missed it.
I realized that this thread is not about diet. Probably a thread about diet and its impact on CO2 emissions should be started because diet is important.
I realized that this thread is not about diet. Probably a thread about diet and its impact on CO2 emissions should be started because diet is important…..
Go for it!!!
I like the concept of a vegetarian lifestyle as long as it is not religion based. A vegetarian who believes that everyone should be a vegetarian and that those who disagree are wrong, then I flee the conversation.
There are lots of diet choices that while not being totally vegetarian are healthier than the average American diet.
How about grass fed beef and range chicken? Not vegetarian, not possible for the whole world, but they have a lower CO2 demand per pound or per Joule of food value.
Just limiting meat consumption to that deck of cards size portion would make us all much healthier.
For some vegetarians it is all the way or don’t even talk to me. This is something in a free market economy that will take a generation or two to reach a societal low average meat consumption. Education is the key IMO.
I believe in freedom of choice, assuming that the choice is not entirely irresponsible. And I do not see it as irresponsible to eat minimal quantities of meat, although it could be considered irresponsible to eat large quantities of meat. Also, one has to consider the source of the meat. How the animals are fed and treated should be considered, as well as the required resources to raise the animals. Health is also a consideration and a high meat diet does not seem optimal for health.
Meat was never important to me. I was amused about some people who see it as a big hardship and sacrifice not to eat meat on Fridays and to eat meat only once per day during lent. It also seemed strange to consider it meat only if it came from some types of animals but not other types of animals. I stopped eating meat when the prices, a few decades ago, increased to the point that I saw it as a consumer rip-off, and I never missed it.
On this site, CO2 emissions and other environmental factors are paramount. From what I’ve read, it looks as though reducing meat consumption would significantly reduce CO2 emissions. But, because this thread is about electric vehicles, discussions about meat should really be in another thread.
I think what is missing from the subject above and all the comments is: What is the objective to be achieved? We come up with all kinds of different solutions without defining the problem!
I recommend that every “environmentalist” read this book: “Green Illusions” by Ozzie Zehner. This is real thinking person’s book. He exposes some real issues with solar, wind, bio-fuel, nuclear, hydrogen, “clean” coal, and hybrids. But he also gets into the real crux of the problem and that is us!
Read this book and you may start to think differently!
I haven’t read the whole book (I should), but I’ve seen excerpts. There’s most definitely a great deal of truth there.
Here’s a post on the subject: http://2greenenergy.com/ozzie-zehners-book/32825/.
Why don’t you give us a few of the teaser excerpts in the book so we can decide if it is worth the trip to the library.
Fish seldom bite on a bare hook.
Sure Larry, but fish don’t go to libraries, either. The subtitle is The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism. Zehner writes about shades, not for or against, black or write, left or right. He speaks to facts or issues that are typically not broadcast because they conflict with beliefs people in the green energy field believe are truths and he shows evidence of facts not being told.
Solar Cells and Other Fairy Tales – he shows that real world, learning by doing is not so optimistic. CA Energy Commiision has tracked cost per W of capacity over last 30 years. While module costs have been coming down slightly over last 10 yrs from $5 to $3 per W; installed costs have remained about $9/W and are on an upward trend. This has been for low tech reasons like, maintenance(to keep panels clean), repair replacing solar pnls and inverters that fail, rising costs of insurance and materials.
Wind Power’s Flurry of Limitations – he writes about wind is renewable but not the turbines. The price of wind turbines has been increasing because a lot of carbon based fuels are required to make an install them. Wind is a frustratingly unpredictable fuel. It is not constant. He shows a plot of wind farm in AZ, where in a 5 day period the power peaks at 3.5 MW for 60 minutes with ave for day at 1.5MW, next day ave= 2MW, next day= .75MW, next day= .6 MW, last day= .7MW. What do you do when you need a stable supply? Data shows that all you can get is about 24% of stated capacity. He writes about how wind energy suppliers and manufacturers wrote the DOE report which contradicted DOE’s own data on 20% wind energy by 2030. It was done in name of wind power profits and nothing more..except for political good points.
Last bait on the hook is some of the other chapter titles, Biofuels and the Politics of Big Corn, The Nuclear-Military-Industrial Complex, Hydrogen Zombie, and more.
His story then goes to look at us. A World-wide society that consumes the need for energy in everything we do. We create a need for high energy consuming products, every bit of alt energy created is immediately consumed so that more is needed.
Instead of consumption we should be concerned with efficiency in using what we have.
He gets into World population issues and how we set up communities. It is not about where the energy comes from but how we use what we have more efficiently. He gives one example that bugs me all the time and that is junk mail. He says if we were able to tell the post office not to deliver it to us anymore, we could save enough energy that could close down 17 coal power plants (includes the energy to remove the trees, process into paper, print the junk, send it to your door step, throw it in the trash, pick it up and reprocess and all the transportation costs along the way! Total waste of energy!!!
…one example that bugs me all the time and that is junk mail. He says if we were able to tell the post office not to deliver it to us anymore, we could save enough energy that could close down 17 coal power plants (includes the energy to remove the trees, process into paper, print the junk, send it to your door step, throw it in the trash, pick it up and reprocess and all the transportation costs along the way! Total waste of energy!!!
With almost unanimous agreement that junk mail is a waste of time, money and energy, why can’t we get rid of this stuff?
I think the answer is relatively simple. We have government delivering the mail. Yes, its still the government despite the claim that the corporation is a private entity. If it was private, it would have been out of business years ago or it would have adapted to the electronic age.
The people who run the post office have not taken the advice about the horse. If the horse is dead, stop beating it.
The arguement about keeping the government mandate for universal delivery is far outdated. There are remote locations in the U.S. that make mail delivery by traditional methods unprofitable. Let people get their mail by e-mail. Subsidize a few DSL or satellite internet accounts to service those remote locations. Make it means tested as well. I don’t see the need to deliver mail by any method for free or 46 cents to the top of a mountain that is occupied by a Hollywood multimillionaire.
We got rid of the Pony Express, isn’t it time to get rid of mechanical delivery by the government altogether?